The time-honored tradition of high school athletes proudly sitting behind a table and signing a national letter of intent is a thing of the past. In its place starting in a matter of weeks, athletes will ink their name to something different — a financial aid package that will likely be tied to a revenue-sharing contract.

Coaches reacted with a mix of shock and confusion to the latest end of business as usual in college sports. The NCAA announced the death of the letter of intent last week on the same day it introduced a newly condensed schedule for signing players out of the transfer portal.

All the changes are, in some way, related to the antitrust settlement a federal judge conditionally approved last week that will result in universities paying their athletes directly through a revenue-sharing program. And that stems from a series of legal and legislative rulings that have allowed college athletes to make money on the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL) since July 2021.

With no national law to pull things together, and with the NCAA’s rulemaking authority gutted by the courts, a group called the Conference Commissioners Association, which has looked over letters of intent for decades, made the recommendation to do away with them for good.

What was the national letter of intent?

National letters of intent date to 1964 and used to be a rite of passage, a sign that a player had “made it.” They were a player’s signed word that he or she would play for at least one year at a certain university.

When players started being able to earn money in 2021, and when they became able to transfer without as many restrictions as in the past, the letters became less important than the financial arrangements that accompanied them, including terms of the NIL deals the players were signing through third parties that supported their soon-to-be school.

Now that the schools are headed toward paying players directly, instead of signing the letter, the players will sign a financial aid agreement that will likely be paired with a contract dictating the terms of their revenue-sharing agreement.

Michael LeRoy, a labor law professor at Illinois familiar with college athletics, said the changes will have an impact. He predicted that bidding for transfers will be less active — and lucrative — when revenue sharing becomes a primary focus for schools and NIL deals will become more “limited to an athlete’s intrinsic brand or marketing value.”

The change also comes as college athletes, notably in California and New Hampshire, seek to be recognized as school employees with the right to collectively bargain for pay and benefits — a proposal schools are fighting in court.

“It’s amazing to see that the faster and farther the NCAA runs away from employment, and even ‘pay-to-play,’ the more their workarounds create a direct financial relationship with their athletes that looks like employment,” LeRoy said.

The new rules prohibit other schools from recruiting a player once the player has signed that aid agreement. Players used to be able to sign aid letters with more than one school, then make sure the NIL money (or other factors) were lined up for their first choice.

Since details of the lawsuit settlement won’t be finalized until spring, it means revenue sharing won’t officially be allowed when the early signing period for football opens on Dec. 4. NIL deals are still allowed, though players won’t be able to back away from the school they sign with, whether next month (for most sports), on Dec. 4 (early football) or on national signing day for football, which is Feb. 5.

What’s new with the transfer portal?

Since it started becoming exponentially easier for players to transfer, the numbers game has grown more difficult for coaches. They have to figure out how many players are returning, how many are leaving, how many are coming from other schools and how many are coming from high school. Many have responded by adding general managers and beefing up their personnel departments.

While the transfer portal has been viewed as something of a necessary evil of the open market, without rules to strictly regulate it, it has turned into something of a free-for-all. Coaches say roster tampering is not uncommon.

Trimming the amount of time the portal is open by 15 days is not certain to bring more order to roster building.

Some football coaches were hoping to eliminate the spring window completely, but there will still be 10 days in April where players can enter the portal.